Posted by Stephen Edie from ts2202.slip.colostate.edu (129.82.192.70)on April 04, 1998 at 07:50:09:
In Reply to: Re: IMPORTANT! Wrapper info - what about a simple mailing list? posted by Marvin on April 04, 1998 at 03:27:09:
Beta testing? If you used an electronic
mailing list, we could distribute versions
through email. We would only send source code,
no binaries. This cuts down on bandwidth and
also makes it less desirable for people to 'leak'
it off the list. As long as we never exchange
binaries, no one without a compiler will really
know whether the software is legit or not so they
won't tell the whole world how 'they can run Glide
games on a Rendition!'
For now, there are rumors circulating the
Rendition newsgroups about a wrapper running Croc.
It's nice they will probably stay that way,
rumors. At the same time, there is a huge amount
of interest for this sort of thing on the
newsgroups. If we ignore them, they'll probably
settle down.
I believe that we are very close to running
a large list of games with the wrapper. One big
leap will be the implementation of 8-bit textures.
The time to distribute could be very near. Before
we distribute, there's several things we could
probably do. One of those things is to make our
own versions of the Glide header files. This way,
we technically wouldn't be "deriving the work from
the SDK". Also, we could write or find a simple
Glide programming guide apart from the SDK so as
to prove that we didn't "reverse engineer the
product". Also, saturating internet all at once
is a great idea. Another idea I have would be to
purposely "leak" the source code to a few FTP
sites. (imply that the source code is not supposed
to be available :] ) As the source code of the
wrapper randomly appears in different places,
several people might make modifications and
improvements to the point where 3dfx might give
up trying to stop it and make Glide more public.
Consider if someone made a Glide->OpenGL wrapper
and a Glide->Direct3D wrapper, and a
Glide->PowerVR wrapper...and so on. :)